It wasn't really a surprise that President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will no longer be a candidate for a second term. After all, Biden was under crushing pressure from some of the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party -- congressional leaders, fundraisers, former President Barack Obama, and especially former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the time-honored Washington way, once Biden relented and stepped aside, people who just hours earlier had their boot on his neck raced to express their heartfelt respect and admiration for his judgment, selflessness, and patriotism.
What was a surprise was the speed with which the party apparatus ran to embrace Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic nominee for president. Before Biden's decision, there was a lot of talk about possible replacements at the top of the ticket -- not just Harris but Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and others. But once Biden withdrew, there was a stampede to Harris. By Monday, a majority of House Democrats, a majority of Senate Democrats, a majority of Democratic governors, all of the state party chairs and, most important, a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention had committed to support Harris.
That is consistent with what this column has said all along -- that it would be very unlikely that Democrats, obsessed with identity, and especially with race and gender, would dump the first woman vice president of color in favor of someone else who polls better. So, in that way, the move to Harris makes perfect sense. But viewed another way, the race to crown Harris makes less sense, because she is a provably terrible candidate, possibly the worst candidate Democrats could field in their current situation.
In case you've forgotten, Harris ran for president in the 2020 Democratic primaries. It started well and ended badly.
Harris chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 21, 2019, to make her announcement. By early March, she had climbed to third place in the 20-plus-candidate field, with 12% support, behind only Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, according to a CNN poll. By late April -- using the CNN poll throughout -- she had slipped to sixth place, with 5% support, behind Biden, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke, according to the same poll.
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By late June, though, she had shot up to 17% support, behind only Biden. But by mid-August, she crashed, from 17% down to 5%. By November, she slipped further to 3%, well behind where she started 10 months earlier. By the time the next poll was taken, in December, she was out of money, out of support and out of the race. She announced her withdrawal on Dec. 3, 2019, two months before the Iowa caucuses.
There's a reason Harris rose in the race and a reason she fell. The short version is that, for Democratic voters, Harris seemed appealing when she first started her campaign, and then they liked her less and less as they got to know her. Familiarity with the candidate killed her hopes.
Her high point led to her low point. In a June 27 debate, Harris attacked Biden for Biden's opposition of mandatory school busing nearly 50 years earlier, in the early 1970s. "There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day," Harris said to Biden. "That little girl was me."
Nationally, the debate shot Harris into the top ranks of the field in terms of the attention paid to her. What voters saw afterward, though, was a candidate who had few ideas, who rambled, sometimes semi-coherently, when speaking, and who was not the centrist many Democrats were seeking.
For example, at her peak, Harris, who was then a Democratic senator from California, and who earlier, as state attorney general, focused on "environmental justice," announced that she would file a bill expanding the progressive idea of "justice" to virtually every aspect of American life. "Environmental justice is interconnected with every aspect of our fight for justice," she said in a statement to the left-wing publication Grist. "From racial justice and economic justice, to housing justice and educational justice, we cannot disentangle the environment people live in from the lives they live." Referring to the riots taking place across the country, she added, "These crises we are experiencing have exposed injustices in our nation that many of us have known and fought our entire lives."
It's not entirely clear what that meant, but it is clear that to non-progressive ears, it didn't sound good. And on other issues, as an MSNBC commentator noted Monday, beyond attacking Donald Trump, Harris in 2020 "struggled to affirmatively say what she stood for." She was, in short, a terrible candidate who improbably ended up as Biden's running mate and then vice president of the United States.
Now that Biden's infirmities have finally caught up with him, Harris appears to have the inside track to the Democratic presidential nomination. The Trump campaign should take her seriously, not because she is a good candidate, but because she will automatically have the vote of the millions of Americans who would vote for anyone other than Trump. That alone means she could win. So her GOP rivals should see the Harris campaign as a formidable opponent. But at the same time, it should be noted -- and Harris herself will likely make it clear soon enough -- that she is perhaps the worst candidate Democrats could choose to run for president.
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